The Arab Winter: Violence from a US-back Egyptian military junta

Now that the Arab Spring has come and gone, one of the features of the new Arab Winter is watching how a US/UK-backed brutal Egyptian military dictatorship has become increasingly more violent towards its own pro-reform, unarmed citizens.

There are still a few readers left out there who will understandably be a bit confused and ask, “Wait a minute, I thought Egypt’s military dictator President Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the famous Arab Spring? I thought we brought democracy to Egypt?”

The answer, of course, is ‘no’ – as democracy never made it to Egypt during the Arab Spring. Instead, the US and UK were under a very tight time table because of what was going on next door in Libya and could not afford to have a civilian government full of democratic idealists running that country. The stakes were just too high.

At the time of Mubarak’s exit in Egypt, both the US and the UK, along with the other participating NATO countries, were busily engaged in a hot contest of regime change and the gradual private takeover of Libya’s economy. In order for NATO’s al-Qeada rebel army to succeed on the ground, and for NATO allies not to be seen breaking the UN’s Resolution 1973 guidelines by being caught directly supplying arms to their proxy army in Libya, they needed a solid ask-no-questions partner in the region for the duration of 2011. That partner came in the form of the new Egyptian military junta, who obediently smuggled arms and al-Qaeda fighters over their western border into eastern Libya to help overthrow the regime of the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

The Wall Street Journal reported on March 17, 2011:

“Egypt’s military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington’s knowledge, U.S. and Libyan rebel officials said…

… The shipments-mostly small arms such as assault rifles and ammunition-appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters. Those fighters have been losing ground for days in the face of a steady westward advance by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.”

For this reason, and for the most part, our moral crusaders in the White House will keep their mouths shut if any reports of naked violence by the Egyptian police state are circulating around Washington DC.

At least nine people have been killed and around 300 people injured in the two days of clashes, according to the Health Ministry.

“The military council is either fed up or lacks vision in dealing with protests. It’s unbelievable what is happening; the revolution was meant to give us freedom,” said Aboul-Ela Madi, a member of the panel who resigned…

… Aya Emad told the AP that troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the Cabinet headquarters. The 24-year-old said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod and another slapped her on the face, leaving her nose broken and her arm in a sling.

“It was a humiliating scene,” activist Mona Seif told TV network Al-Nahar about seeing soldiers slapping an old woman in the face. “I have never seen this in my life.”

It is important to note that the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron are supporting this gruesome violence by the Egyptian State, even in the face of prima facia evidence that the military council is beating and killing its own political opponents. Unlike western crusades to capture the assets of Syria and Iran, following the template of Libya, you will hear no serious moral or lofty ‘human rights’ condemnations of Egypt’s supreme military council coming out of Washington or Whitehall.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just look at how both the US and UK deal with their own protesters at home.

After seeing Occupy Wall Street activists being intimidated, beaten and pepper sprayed by New York City law enforcement, Egypt’s military has cited those same heavy-handed US police actions against the OWS demonstrators in order to justify their own violent suppression in Cairo. The message to protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is not so different than the one delivered to demonstrators in New York’s Zuccotti Park – and that is, “Pack up and go home now, or else you could be seriously hurt – or worse.”

Notice now that the only regimes who are safe from US-UK or NATO routing them are the monarchies and the military dictatorships in the Middle East. This should tell you all you really need to know in order to understand the foreign policy of western countries today.